Adequate hand hygiene is important in many industries, such as hospitals and care homes, in order to avoid nosocomial infections, in the food industry and manufacturing to avoid contamination, as well as all areas where the chain of infection for pathogens and contamination with the typical vector “hand” needs to be interrupted. Hand hygiene is especially crucial in medical facilities.
Compliance with hand hygiene rules by staff and visitors of facilities is often not optimal. Reasonable or required hand hygiene actions are not performed, for instance because they are forgotten at the necessary time.
In order to improve compliance, the following basic approaches are used:
Timely reminder of hand hygiene to trigger a hand hygiene action as well as detection of a hand hygiene action that is necessary according to the rules. This measure is related to the target value for hygiene actions.
Quantitative collection of hand hygiene actions or appropriate surrogate parameters in order to obtain insight that leads to further measures (e.g., training) to improve hand hygiene behavior. This approach is related to the actual value of hygiene actions.
Increased transparency of the individual hand hygiene behavior in order to enable self-control, control or reminders by third-parties. This measure is related to the relationship between actual and target value of hygiene actions.